


When the Hungry are Fed

by joinedunderprotest



Category: A Song of Ice and Fire - George R. R. Martin, Game of Thrones (TV)
Genre: Alternate Universe - Canon Divergence, Daenerys Targaryen/Daario Naharis (minor), F/M, Female Friendship, Slow Burn, This is show!compliant but Arya received her book!canon training from the Faceless Men, What's the timeline? The timeline is [blows extended raspberry]
Language: English
Status: In-Progress
Published: 2019-11-27
Updated: 2020-05-19
Packaged: 2021-02-25 23:35:54
Rating: Mature
Warnings: Creator Chose Not To Use Archive Warnings
Chapters: 4
Words: 19,612
Publisher: archiveofourown.org
Story URL: https://archiveofourown.org/works/21583903
Author URL: https://archiveofourown.org/users/joinedunderprotest/pseuds/joinedunderprotest
Summary: He killed the slave? He should have killed the masters!-When Arya flees Braavos, she goes east. She finds the Breaker of Chains, and Daenerys finds a much-needed ally.
Relationships: Arya Stark & Daenerys Targaryen, Arya Stark & Daenerys Targaryen & Missandei, Arya Stark/Gendry Waters, Grey Worm/Missandei, Jon Snow & Arya Stark, Jon Snow/Daenerys Targaryen, Missandei & Arya Stark
Comments: 165
Kudos: 400





	1. The Clerk

**Author's Note:**

> This story begins roughly midway through Season Five, but I give even less of a fuck about stable timelines than the writers of the show. This is set in the show's universe, but Arya has been receiving her Renaissance Man education from the books, not her Get Punched a Lot education from the show.
> 
> There is a significant amount of plot to get through in Meereen before Team Dragon travels to Westeros, so Gendrya and Jonerys fans are advised to strap in.

Innyrio Ormiros was a truly excellent secretary. It had nothing to do with a keen mind for numbers or an unswerving ability to tell when a debtor to the Bank was lying, though he had both in spades.

What set him apart was his silence.

Innyrio could fade into the background before a man had even finished looking at him. His breathing was quiet, his footsteps silent. Whether taking notes at a meeting or calculating rates of interest, he sat in his corner, doing his faultless work without a sound, and only moved forward when he appeared with whatever document required, almost before being asked.

Because of this, Tycho Nestoris treasured him almost as much as gold. The lad had barely worked at the Iron Bank a month when Tycho plucked him from the rank and file of the clerks and made him his own private secretary. The last one had a nose that was snivelling when it wasn’t stuffed up, and he moved his lips when adding up large sums. Tycho had been uncharitably relieved when the lad had caught the sweating sickness and died. Two months he’d had Innyrio, and they were the most productive of his illustrious career.

Innyrio knew all this. He considered it his job to know it. He wanted always to learn and improve and, above all, to serve.

_Valar dohaeris._

To do this he watched keenly, every moment of every day. People could be learnt, just as easily as numbers. At that very moment, Tycho was shifting in his chair, the fingers on the hand not gripping his quill twitching slightly. His lips parted half an inch, about to speak. He wanted something, and Innyrio had memorised his schedule, so the boy plucked a ledger from the thin, wide drawer beneath his own desk and padded over to Tycho’s far grander one.

“Innyrio,” called Tycho, not looking up from his work, “I need the—ah.” Tycho raised his head as he became aware of Innyrio before him, holding out the leather-bound volume for him. “Very good. I take it this is—”

“The accounts of the Westerosi crown,” Innyrio confirmed. “I imagined you would wish to study them before their arrival, which should be around three bells. I took the liberty of inquiring at the docks this morning before coming in. The seas are perfect, so it is unlikely their ship will be delayed.”

Tycho smiled thinly. It wasn’t a handsome smile, but it was the widest and most sincere the man could manage. Innyrio tilted his head very slightly in response to praise left unspoken.

“What do you imagine,” said Tycho, flipping through the pages of the account ledger, “are the chances their Master of Coin is one tenth as prepared as you?”

“I shouldn’t like to say,” Innyrio deflected expertly. “I am new to the Iron Bank. I dare not venture guesses about the practices of a client from across the Narrow Sea.”

Innyrio, in fact, had never met any Westerosi, though he almost knew a person who had.

“You remember the Lyseni fleshmonger last week, the one who imagined his rather average hoard of wealth made him someone worth knowing?” Tycho recalled.

Innyrio nodded. The man had drunk them dry before even beginning discussion, and then had mistaken haggling for negotiation.

“That man would turn his nose up at any king of Westeros. A rather backwards people, warlike and mean, and mistaking both for virtues. I will be satisfied when we are rid of them and I may turn my attention to the mess of Slaver’s Bay.”

He gestured to the mess of papers on his desk, and Innyrio slipped forth to tidy them. Even he struggled to make sense of the figures dancing on the pages. Innyrio did not approve of things he couldn’t understand.

“It’s a difficult time in the region, I take it,” he ventured.

Tycho groaned, pinching his brow and holding out a cup to be refilled, which Innyrio saw to. Water, not wine. Wine was for clients. It made them slow and jovial in the right doses.

“It is a vicious knot, in which the ropes resist being tugged. All because of that _woman_.”

There was a name spoken across Essos – sighed by some, roared by others. In Braavos of the Hundred Isles, bastard daughter of Valyria, there were whispers, but whispers weren’t enough to teach Innyrio as much as he wanted to know.

“You mean the Dragon Queen?” he inquired, sorting.

“The very same. She has thrown the economies of several of the ancient cities into a tailspin, and this impacts not only many of our clients but a considerable number of our own ventures.”

“She is freeing slaves, though,” Innyrio pointed out. “Surely Braavos, of all the Free Cities, can see merit in that. What is the wealth of the master compared to the freedom of the slave?”

_He killed the slave? He should have killed the masters!_

For a moment, Innyrio shut his eyes. _Not now. I’ve been doing so well._ It was someone else who had said those words, not him.

When he opened his eyes, he found Tycho staring at him, sceptical and surprised. “I never took you for such an idealist.”

_I’m not. I’m Innyrio, and all I want is to be a banker._

“Apologies,” he offered, voice smooth once more. “I only wonder about the impact of Braavosi law in our dealings with those abroad.”

Tycho watched him a moment longer, then dismissed whatever he was thinking. “Yes, well, it is important to remember we bankers are in truth only servants. It is for the Many-Faced God to judge what is right and wrong, not us. We only serve.”

“ _Valar dohaeris,_ ” Innyrio said by rote.

“ _Valar morgulis_ ,” Tycho responded in kind. “Admirable though the Queen’s dreams may be, she leaves chaos strewn as well as broken chains. She has overturned the lifeblood of those cities, and killed a number of powerful, wealthy men. As a result, those remaining still have wealth but little power and are determined to change that. You know they’re funding insurgents?”

“I didn’t know that.”

“Sons of the Harpy, they call themselves. Only in Meereen. I imagine next will be funding a full-scale rebellion.”

“And will that be good?” Innyrio asked.

“It will be _expensive_ ,” Tycho specified, “therefore good for us. Provided they can pay. If not, perhaps we may discover a new appreciation for Daenerys Targaryen’s cause.”

Innyrio nodded, then vanished back to his own desk, working without interruption until Tycho prepared to set out. Innyrio knew the distance from the Iron Bank to the docks, how fast Tycho walked on his own and with clients, how crowded the streets and ports were at this time of day, and exactly how long Arbor gold should breathe before being served. He continued his own work, and prepared refreshments when ready for them.

His calculations were correct to the minute, and he was pouring a second cup just as the clatter of footsteps sounded down the hall. Tycho Nestoris, the Westerosi Master of Coin, and, by the clanking, a Westerosi guard in armour, who could not be offered drink on duty. Perfect.

He turned as the doors opened, holding the cup respectfully in greeting. He looked over the banker, then over the lord, then finally past him to the guard.

The cup fell from his hand.

Fortunately, with a speed many would not ascribe even to Innyrio, he caught it with his right hand before it could hit the floor. Lord Tyrell even seemed to find it amusing.

“Oh, look at that!” he called, speaking Westerosi with a plummy accent, bringing his hands out from under his brocaded cloak to applaud. “How swift you are! Don’t even seem to have spilled a drop! If you ever tire of banking, you might make your fortune as a juggler, boy.”

Innyrio nodded vacantly, but he had eyes only for the guard. Meryn Trant.

Innyrio did not know that name. Someone else did. A dead girl. She also knew the name Syrio Forel, a musical Braavosi name, fitting for a man who fought like he was dancing.

_Kill the Braavosi. Bring the girl._

There was a small man, quick as a snake and loyal as a wolf, and there was a man in golden armour who murdered him.

_Joffrey. Cersei. Meryn Trant._

He was in armour again today, but no helm. Easy to kill a man with no helm, if he wasn’t expecting it.

“ _Boy_ ,” hissed Tycho, the irritated sound of someone who had called more than once.

Innyrio shook himself. He rushed to pull out Lord Tyrell’s chair for him, then presented him with his own copy of the accounts, then hurried back into the shadows, ignoring Tycho’s dissatisfied glare. He ignored everything, including the pounding of his own heart. The man behind the Master of Coin was just a pile of gilded armour. Innyrio didn’t know him. How could he know him, when he had never crossed the Narrow Sea?

He endured the meeting. This was just the first, so that Tycho could take measure of the Master of Coin. It did not take long to discover the man was a puffed-up simpleton and send him on his way. When the lord and the man who was nothing to Innyrio left, Tycho watched him.

“What the hell was that?” he demanded, switching back to Braavosi.

“I fear I may have fallen ill,” Innyrio explained, struggling to catch his breath.

Tycho recoiled. “It’s not the sweat, is it?”

Innyrio shook his head. “A small thing, no doubt.”

“Well, you’re of no use to me in this state.” Tycho gestured to the door. “Go home. I expect you back on your feet in the morning. It’s going to be a long day.”

Innyrio thanked him and ducked his head, leaving. He stepped out onto the street, uncertain where his feet were taking him. He rented a small room off Wineyna Aranos, a respectable widow, but he had no wish to go back to his narrow bed and bare walls. He wandered without thought, at one point realising he was heading to the docks where the Westerosis’ ship would be docked and forcing himself to turn around.

He barely noticed he had come down a deserted backstreet until a pair of men appeared, wielding knives.

“No need to make this difficult,” announced one through a mouthful of cracked brown teeth. “Your purse is all. Hand it over and we’ll be on our way.”

Innyrio brought one foot back, instantly presenting a smaller target. “I think not.”

“You what?” said the other, in a voice so deep it hit Innyrio in the chest. “Now, while we’re still asking!”

The man lumbered toward Innyrio, big but slow, and Innyrio darted past him. He was quicker by far. If only she could reach her—

Innyrio’s hand found no hilt on his hip. Of course he didn’t. He was a bank clerk. He wielded nothing heavier than a quill, and it was stupid to forget that.

In the split-second that he chided himself for this lapse, the other man snuck up behind him. He heard the swish of the blade half a second too late, and it cut through his doublet and grazed his ribs, drawing blood. He hissed and fell back against the wall, producing a small bag of coins from a hidden pocket.

“Here!” he whimpered, throwing it at the men. Innyrio was the type to cower and surrender when cornered, not to fight.

The man with the bloodied knife hefted the bag, weighing its contents against the effort of fighting any further. He nodded at his companion and the two left without another word.

Innyrio stayed in the alleyway for a while longer, trying to ease his mind, until he spotted the sun dipping low in the sky. With a hand on his ribs, he made his way through the streets, this time with purpose. He hailed a ferryman, who charged him nothing once he heard his destination.

As the last rays of the days burnt out, Innyrio Ormiros crossed the threshold of the House of Black and White and became no one again.

Beyond the main temple, she found the kindly man sitting.

“Who are you?” he asked as she knelt before him.

“No one.”

“Who were you today?”

“Innyrio Ormiros, clerk at the Iron Bank, secretary to Tycho Nestoris.”

“What do you know now that you did not know when you left us?”

“The price of Myrish lace has risen threefold because a bad flax harvest has driven up linen,” she told him.

“Many fashionable people will be dismayed,” observed the kindly man. “What else?”

“Rhona, a maid at the Iron Bank, is with child by Noho Dimittis, whose office she cleans.”

“Has she told him?” asked the kindly man.

She shook her head. “Her husband longs for a child. She will tell him it’s his, and he’ll rejoice.”

“Do you know he will rejoice?”

“Rhona thinks so,” she conceded.

“A happy occasion. One more.”

 _Meryn Trant guards Mace Tyrell, and he doesn’t wear a helm,_ she thought, but she said, “The former masters of Meereen fund insurgents who hate Daenerys Targaryen.”

“Why do they hate her?” asked the kindly man.

“Because she hates them,” she answered. “She has killed them, stripped them of their power, and freed their slaves.”

“Do you approve?” he questioned.

“No,” she lied.

“You disapprove?”

“No,” she said, then lied, “a girl has no opinion on the matter. Innyrio Ormiros hopes the economy will recover soon enough.”

The kindly man watched her. She did not bite her lip or fidget, as a little girl who lied poorly once had, but nor did she stare still and unflinching. Trying too hard to give away nothing gave away everything, she had learnt.

Finally, the kindly man nodded. “Innyrio is a banker. He must think about these things. Before, when a girl was Mercedene the mummer or Cat of the Canals or even Blind Beth, she was unencumbered with matters beyond the city.”

“Noara thought about these things,” she pointed out. “She was only a physician’s assistant, but she thought about these things.”

“Ah, but a personal physician of a powerful keyholder. In such a household, she must turn her thoughts outwards.”

“Do the servants of the Many-Faced God turn their thoughts to Slaver’s Bay?” she asked.

He peered at her. “When you serve Him fully, you may know for yourself. For now you are merely an acolyte.”

“I’ve been an acolyte a long time,” she noted. She had tried asking around, though the other servants were rarely forthcoming about their training.

“You are not ready. However, you are, it seems, wounded.”

She had been favouring one side, she realised. “Innyrio was robbed. They cut him.”

“Were they vicious men, to attack even after he surrendered without argument?”

“It was only a graze,” she said, avoiding the real question she knew he had hidden. She pretended to be distracted trying to get a good look at her ribs.

“Then treatment is needed. Go find the waif.”

She rose to her feet and went off in search of her, eager to be out from under his eyes. She found the waif cutting herbs.

“I need you to bandage me,” she announced.

The waif looked up from her work, and when the girl gestured to her ribs, she nodded, reaching for some gauze. “Disrobe.”

They spoke a little as the waif treated her, switching from Braavosi to Westerosi to High Valyrian, sprinkling in words in other tongues. The girl almost felt like a person when she had the waif to talk to.

“Are we friends?” she blurted out as the waif spread salve over the cut.

“What do you mean?” the waif asked evenly, not looking up.

“We talk, we tell each other things, we take care of each other. At least, you take care of me,” she added, reddening. She could list few things she had done to help the waif. “Are we friends?”

“This is what friends do?” asked the waif. “Then we are friends.”

The girl almost accepted that. Cat of the Canals had friends, and so did Mercy and Noara, but the girl did not. Someone she was once before did, though they were all stolen from her, one way or another. She wanted to believe the waif was her friend.

“Friends are loyal to each other, too,” she told the waif.

“Loyal how?” the waif asked, binding her with a roll of bandage.

“Like,” the girl began, “if one of us were in danger, the other would protect them, even if it put them in danger.”

“If someone attacks a servant of the Many-Faced God, they bring their downfall on themselves. I would help you there,” the waif promised, tying the bandage off.

The girl made a face. This wasn’t quite enough, though she struggled for the words to express it.

“But say, if another servant of this house attacked me,” she suggested, not biting her lip, “would you defend me then?”

The waif was packing away her supplies. “The servants of this house have no will of their own, no reason to clash. If one servant fought another, it would mean one had turned away from the service of the Many-Faced God and forsaken His protection.”

The waif moved implacably as she said it. The girl swallowed.

“What is done to one who does that?” she asked, shrugging her shirt back on.

“If one no longer desires the gift of serving Him, they receive the gift of His mercy.” The waif smiled. Her tone had remained soft and pleasant throughout. “Will you stay for dinner?”

The girl found herself shaking her head. “No. No, Innyrio is busy. I’ll go now. _Valar morgulis._ ”

“ _Valar dohaeris._ ”

The waif turned to replace her box on its shelf and didn’t notice the girl palming the knife she used to cut herbs.

-

She found him near the docks.

She saw him go into a brothel, and she went round the back. Cat of the Canals had known Merry who owned it. Merry didn’t know Innyrio, but she knew the coin she was offered.

“No stains,” Merry ordered, then showed her to a peephole that looked into the main room before striding out to display her girls for Meryn Trant.

The girls all posed for Meryn, but he only shook his head, unimpressed.

“Too old,” he said of every one.

Finally, Merry brought out Lanna. Lanna was four-and-ten, with shining gold hair and a soft, innocent face. She had the highest prices in the house, maybe the whole street.

“Too old,” said Meryn.

She watched as Merry exchanged looks with some of her girls. If four-and-ten was too old, he was one of _those_.

“These are all we have,” said Merry, her natural saleswoman’s charm laced with firm menace. “If these are too old for you, you must look elsewhere.”

Meryn glared and made some threats, but he rose to go.

She pulled away from her peephole, ran out the back, and was back out on the street before he had gone twenty paces.

She pretended to bump into him, and then she feigned recognition. “Oh, my lord,” she said in the Common Tongue.

“Watch yourself,” he growled. “I am a knight, and will be addressed as such.”

“A thousand apologies, ser,” she hurried. “Some of the subtleties of your Westerosi titles are beyond me. Doubtless you have erased this humble servant from your memory. I am Innyrio Ormiros, secretary to Tycho Nestoris of the Iron Bank.”

“You,” he acknowledged, already moving away.

She caught up. “I see you are searching. Ser, these houses are for the lowly, not a knight of the Kingsguard like you. With your gracious permission, I will show you where to find the finest courtesans in the Free Cities. Or, if your tastes are more,” she leaned in, conspiratorial, “ _specific_ , say the word and Innyrio will assist.”

She watched him appraise her.

“Those girls are too old,” he tossed out. A test.

She schooled her face into a knowing smile. “Ah yes. In your tongue, they talk of girls ‘flowering,’ but by then the bloom is already lost, no? I can find some more to your liking. Pretty. Discreet.”

Meryn smirked, and she gestured for him to follow, fighting revulsion every step of the way.

“You are gone for an hour or two, or you have stepped out all night?” she asked as they went.

“Lord Tyrell is eating and will retire. I will not be missed until dawn.”

“That is good. Very good. More time.”

“These girls, how young do they get?”

_If you hadn’t escaped, would he have looked at you? Would anyone have bothered to stop him?_

She looked over at him. Not particularly tall, but larger and heavier than any young girl.

_Sansa never escaped._

“As young as they need to be,” she promised. “Just step through here, please, ser.”

She ushered him into a backstreet. No boats floated in the canal here. No lights glowed in the windows. This had been a salt warehouse, but the Iron Bank seized its contents a fortnight past in repayment of a debt, and now it stood abandoned. The walkway was barely wide enough for one.

“If you will, ser, just let me through,” she said, squeezing past him. He pivoted to make room for her, and in an instant she had pulled his sword from his scabbard and slashed at his legs.

Every suit of armour had its weak spot. The knees were guarded, but only in front, and one good slice to the back of them was enough to cripple a man for life.

Though ‘for life’ was a relative term in this case.

Meryn screamed as he collapsed, but Braavos was not a city where people came running for a man’s scream. The night swallowed the sound.

He tried to push himself up, but she brought down his sword with all her strength, impaling his right hand and pinning it to the uncobbled street. He screamed again, more desperately this time, but still the night floated on.

She got down on her knees, seizing his left hand and bringing it behind his back, sitting on top of it. He tried to buck her off, but with his legs and hand bleeding and ruined, he had only fading strength and no leverage.

She seized a fistful of his hair and yanked his head back. He strained against the grip, but she managed to still him long enough to pull her little knife out and cut a deep gouge into his cheek.

“You don’t know me, _ser,_ ” she hissed, “but you did once. You murdered my friend. Syrio Forel, remember him? He died bravely. You’re going to die like _this._ ”

He whimpered, too agonised to cry out again, and his muscles began to sag beneath her. She twisted her knife, widening the wound, and he jerked again. “You’re not allowed to die yet. First, tell me. You fuck little girls. You like to hurt them. It gets you off. Did you ever do that to Sansa Stark?”

He only made a pitiful noise. She made another, shallower cut.

“If you answer, I’ll slit your throat and be done with it. If you don’t, I’ll take one eye, then the other. _Did you ever do that to Sansa Stark?_ ”

“No,” he managed between sobs. “Not to her. Hit her. Th-the King said. But I-I-I never fucked her.”

The girl believed in promises. She made an end of it.

He was almost too heavy to roll, but she was determined, and in his golden armour he sank like a stone. She wrapped his golden sword in her own bloodstained cloak and dropped it after him.

Then, in the dead of night, she snuck onto a certain dock. With only the moon to guide her, she pulled a stone aside and pulled something precious out. It was a skinny little sword named Needle.

Then she snuck away again.

She found money in Innyrio’s room, and she stole a little more, as Cat had learnt once. She dropped Innyrio’s face in a canal, then found an isolated spot in an alleyway to camp out and get some rest. When the sun rose, she would go to the docks and find passage. Anywhere would do.

In her dreams, she howled hopefully, and a hundred wolves sang with her.

She woke before dawn, in the grey light and fog of a day not yet come. A skinny grey cat had made itself at home in her lap while she slept.

“Hello, you,” she greeted, scratching the cat behind her ears. “Did you know I’m going? Do you want to come with me?”

The cat yawned, stretching, then froze. It whipped its head around. That was all she needed to duck and roll, jumping to her feet as the waif appeared in an archway.

The girl backed away. “You don’t have to do this.”

The waif advanced. “The servants of the Many-Faced God do not choose. You thought differently, so now you are lost to Him. I serve Him still, so I know I cannot choose. I can only serve.”

The waif pulled out a blade. It was bigger than the girl’s. Even if the girl had a greatsword of Valyrian steel, it could not save her from this.

“Please,” she said, stumbling back, nearly tripping over the cat. “I’m going. I’ll leave Braavos. None from the House need concern themselves with me. This girl can just be forgotten.”

The waif shook her head. “You have cast your lot. There is only this for you.”

The waif lunged, blade pointed. The girl dodged, but a white-hot pain lanced her side, and she dropped to the ground, clenching her teeth to keep from crying out.

The waif came toward her, stone-faced. The girl kicked out, catching her in the knee, and the waif fell over. The girl struggled to stand. She could feel blood trickling down her side, wetting her hip, her leg, filling her boot.

The cat came to her, standing before her, hissing, back arched. The waif looked down at it. Without looking away, she pulled out a knife and threw it, catching the girl in the meaty part of her arm, making her cry out and fall again. She tried to get to her knees, closing her eyes against the pain.

“You could not be no one,” she heard the waif say, drawing closer. “Now you can only be nothing.”

That wasn’t true. She wasn’t no one. She wasn’t nothing.

_I am– I am–_

She was small, and she was not strong, but she was fierce and the girl was her own and needed guarding, so she leapt up, claws extended, at the other one’s face.

There was a moment of screaming and panic as she struck, but then the other one pulled her off and threw her to the ground.

Then she was the girl again, watching the cat curl up into a ball and spit furiously. That little cat was so brave, and she would be too.

“Enough.” The waif came again.

The girl struggled to her feet, struggling to grip her Needle. “No.”

“Do not fight me.”

“No.”

“You are done,” said the waif, producing another blade. “ _Valar morgulis._ ”

“ _No!”_

And then she was so many different things at once. She was the cat, leaping as high as she could, but she was also rats scurrying from their holes, and birds swooping down from the sky, and foxes running through the alleys. They snarled and shrieked and cried out, and there were so many she felt like she was trying to run in a hundred directions at once. But there was only one direction in all her minds, and that was toward the waif.

She went for the legs first, clawing and biting, then, as the waif fell to the ground, for the soft parts, the ones her hundred minds knew were tender in humans. The waif screamed, but it could barely be heard over all her own cries. The waif tried to throw up her arms, but she came at her from all angles, and blocking the bigger beasts left holes for the smaller ones to burrow into.

Every one of her minds knew weak spots, knew clawing and snapping, but not one knew mercy. They didn’t stop until the waif fell limp, when she went from an enemy to a meal. She had a hundred hungry mouths.

But before she could feast, something snapped and she was one girl again, and the frenzy fell still. All the beasts stopped and looked at other, then warily backed away and disappeared back whence they came, except the cat, who watched her expectantly.

She took one step, then another, moving closer to the dead thing that had almost been her friend a day ago. Only one eye remained, and it was wide and unseeing. Everything beneath it was a mess of red, ravaged flesh.

“I’m sorry,” she whispered, kneeling to shut the eye. “I didn’t mean to—”

But there were no words.

The cat at her heels, she wandered into a bustling street nearby, stealing a cart and a burlap sack. She wheeled the heavy, red sack to the waterfront, and once again the ferryman asked no questions as he rowed her to the House of Black and White.

The stairs leading to the House made her cart useless, so she could only drag the sack up the steps, thinking apologies as it hit every step along the way. She pulled open the white door and entered.

The kindly man sat at the edge of the pool. His face did not change as she walked up to him, leaving streaks of blood on the ground behind her, some hers and some not. She left the sack at his feet, a horrible offering to a horrible god.

“I’ll do it again,” she said. “I didn’t want to. She was my friend, near enough, and I only wanted her to leave me alone. But if you send anyone else, I’ll do it again and I won’t hesitate one bit.”

“You are injured,” he pointed out, unconcerned. “Perhaps I should give you the gift now, where you stand.”

“You won’t,” she told him.

“Won’t I?”

“No.” She pressed a hand to her bleeding arm, stemming the flow. “I don’t think you want me dead.”

“I sent her after you,” he said, gesturing to the sack. “Did you think it a game?”

“It was a test.”

“A test?”

“I talked to the others in this house. They didn’t say much, but I pieced things together. When they were acolytes, they scrubbed floors. They cleaned the dead. They practiced killing, but they didn’t practice being other people for no reason. You treated me different. There’s something you want from me.”

“Your training did not differ.” His face didn’t twitch. He was too good for that. But there was a light in his eye.

“That is a lie. You’re lying to me now.”

And he smiled, like a jolly old grandfather pleased with a clever child. “It was. You’ve come far, girl.”

“Why?” She could never figure that out. “What is it you want from me? Will you keep me here forever? I won’t stay.”

“We will not keep you here.” That didn’t answer what he wanted from her, she noticed. “You are free to go. Wherever you wish.” He produced a bag of coins. “This is enough for passage anywhere in the wide, wide world.”

She reached slowly, then snatched it like a cat would a mouse and looked inside. They were real coins, Cat and Innyrio both could tell her. It couldn’t be that easy. They hadn’t done this just to send her on her way, surely.

“Where will you go?” he asked companionably. “Perhaps back to Westeros?”

She shook her head. Jon Snow had sworn an oath to the Night’s Watch, Sansa was married to the Imp, and the Boltons stole Winterfell after the Red Wedding. There was nothing for her there.

“No? A shame. I remember a girl who hated the first of our order because he gave the gift to the slave and not the masters. Westeros is free, and Braavos, too, but the rest of the world … Can that girl bear to live where the masters carry on unfettered?”

She glared. “It’s no concern of yours where I go.”

“Then go,” he agreed. “If you can find a place where your conscience and your spirit are unburdened.”

She stood. She started to turn, paused, turned back. “Her face is ruined,” she said, gesturing down at the waif. “But you’ll still … do right by her body, won’t you?”

“With dignity, like any who enters our house,” the kindly man promised.

She nodded and left.

The sun was rising as she reached the docks. She surveyed the ships, playing with her bag of coins so sailors would notice and call out.

“Ship to Lys, pretty girl!”

“Pentos, best cabin!”

“Yi-Ti, see the Jade Sea!”

“Asshai, Asshai, Asshai, only for the brave!”

She shook her head, walking on.

“Meereen!”

She stopped. She looked over her shoulder, and the sailor, seeing he’d caught her attention, redoubled his efforts. In High Valyrian, he boasted, “Meereen, lady, greatest of cities! There is a queen there, the most beautiful woman in the world, who rides dragons and breaks chains. If you lived to be two hundred, never would you see a sight like it. Come to Meereen, where the Mhysa watches over us all.”

Meereen was far. Meereen was dangerous. Meereen was ruled over by the sister of Rhaegar Targaryen. And she would have nothing there, know no one.

_He killed the slave? He should have killed the masters!_

“How much?” she asked, and the sailor grinned.

He gave her a price and she paid it.

Something batted at her ankle. She looked down and saw the cat. The little thing sat back on its haunches and meowed at her. She grinned and picked it up, showing it to the sailor.

“And my cat comes too,” she declared.

The sailor tried to scratch the cat behind her ears, drawing his hand back when she spat and clawed at him.

He tried to smile. “A good mouser, I think?”

“Oh yes,” the girl promised. She could make sure of that, she suspected.

“You have bags?” he asked, looking behind her. “We set sail very soon. I don’t know if you have time to go for them.”

“Just me and her,” she said.

He shrugged and then gestured to the gangplank. “Then come aboard, lady.”

She went up, and together she and the cat watched Braavos slowly vanish in the fog as they sailed away.

There were people she would miss, but they would miss Cat, Mercy, Noara, Innyrio.

She looked down at the purring bundle in her arms. “We need a name for you.” She took a look at the greyish, uneven fur. “How about Flint? Do you feel like a Flint?”

Flint licked a grey paw and began grooming, which she took for approval.

“Nice to meet you, Flint. I’m Arya Stark.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on tumblr [@arsenicandfinelace](http://arsenicandfinelace.tumblr.com/).


	2. Daenerys I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> So we pick up in the period of the Meereen storyline just after Daenerys decided to re-open the fighting pits and marry Hizdahr, before Tyrion shows up. And we're gonna streeeeetch that period out because fuck the GOT timeline like it fucked us first.

To conquer a city was to feel the blood of the dragon coursing through her veins, to set a course and fly along it, to be unstoppable.

To rule a city was to bend. Dragons did not bend easily.

But Daenerys would do whatever it took to protect the freed men of Meereen. After all, she was not only a dragon but a mother, too, and mothers took care of their children.

That was why she reopened the fighting pits. That was why she agreed to marry Hizdahr zo Loraq, a man whose great family’s fortune was built on the backs of countless uncounted slaves.

She did it for her children. For peace in Meereen.

“Since the announcements have gone out, your grace,” Hizdahr told her from the foot of the stairs, “the streets have been mostly quiet. It pleases the people beyond all measure to hear that the fighting pits will be open once more. The Sons of the Harpy clearly are satisfied, as there have been no fresh attacks since.”

 _Since they slew Ser Barristan_ , she thought to herself. _My protector, my friend, my only window to Rhaegar._

Ser Barristan was a true knight, truer than Jorah Mormont had ever been. He had served her valiantly to his last breath, crossing half the world to swear himself to her cause, and died defending Grey Worm and his Unsullied. She wanted to avenge him. She wanted to root the Sons of the Harpy out of their hiding holes and burn them to a man, as pitiful repayment for a noble soul.

But she could not. She could only plaster on a smile, commission a wedding dress, and prepare to send men to their death for sport.

“I am pleased to hear it,” she said, almost truthfully. “Though I notice you say the streets are only _mostly_ quiet. Is there unrest still? It seems the Sons of the Harpy are not quite as satisfied as you would have me believe.”

Hizdahr’s eyes widened, and he put up his hands before him. “Your grace, you misunderstand. Truly, they have cause no trouble. It is only minor unrest in the lesser areas of the city. No blood has been shed, I promise.”

Daenerys pursed her lips. “Unrest with no blood? Now I am curious. Tell me.”

Daario interceded, stepping neatly in front of Hizdahr, linking his hands in front of him so the broad line of his shoulders eclipse Hizdahr’s slim frame. She couldn’t resist a smile at that. She had not yet discussed the matter of her marriage with Daario, but his obvious jealousy pleased the girlish, unqueenly parts of her.

“Your grace,” he drawled with a slight tilt of his head, “there have been reports in the last few days of a woman at the docks.”

Daenerys’s eyebrow raised. “A whore?”

Daario laughed a little. “Doesn’t appear so. New to the city, fresh off a Braavosi ship. It seems she has … opinions.”

Daenerys remembered Braavos. She and Viserys had stayed in a house with a red door and a fragrant lemon tree. To her innocent little self, the place had felt like home, and when they had overstayed their welcome and been forced to leave, she had wept many a night for the house and the city. Now one of its people came to Meereen to slander her, and her memory of home grew a little more distant once again.

“Opinions of Meereen or of me?” she inquired, pushing away memories of fog and canals.

Daario shook his head, wincing in sympathy. “Of your brother Rhaegar.”

 _No, it was Viserys who lived in Braavos,_ she nearly told him.

“What could any Braavosi have against my late brother?” she asked. “He never stepped foot there. Don’t tell me the Usurper has admirers even across the Narrow Sea.”

“I don’t believe she’s mentioned Robert Baratheon or the Iron Throne, your grace.” Daario’s brow wrinkled. “I don’t think she even mentioned you all that much. She only speaks against your brother. She says he was heartless or something of the kind.”

Heartless?

Daenerys thought back to the last time she saw Ser Barristan. He told her of her brother, of his singing skills, of how played in the streets and gave his earnings to other singers, to orphans, to a tavern as he took Ser Barristan drinking. He thought well of Rhaegar.

Ser Barristan was an honest man. He had told her the truth of her father, though he knew she wouldn't want to hear it. Aerys Targaryen was the Mad King, vicious and cruel, and Ser Barristan told her so she could protect herself and her people from the danger that she might tread his path. She had wanted to deny it, but she remembered Viserys, with his impotent rage and his ever-mounting cruelty. She didn’t want to believe such things of her own father, but she had to accept they could be true of any man who sired a son like Viserys.

But Rhaegar. Of Rhaegar, Ser Barristan spoke only of his beautiful voice and his gentle heart.

Now some Braavosi woman who had never known her brother came into her city to speak against the man? Dishonouring both her brother’s memory and her protector’s word?

For the sake of her children, she would do anything. For the sake of her murdered brother, she would do everything.

“Bring her here,” she commanded. “I would meet this woman who imagines she knows so much of my brother.”

“Your grace,” said Hizdahr from behind Daario, “everything has been going so well. Surely—”

“Surely our Queen has the right to have any resident of the city brought before her,” cut in Missandei from her place at Daenerys’s side. As ever, her voice was soft but her intentions were unyielding.

Daario nodded, gripping his dagger. “Right away, my queen.” He turned, striding out.

After that came the daily audiences. Among the embattled masters and harried residents, two more freed men came before her asking to return to bondage. One was yet another elderly man who could not bear the hard living of the barracks she had installed. The second was a young woman, heavily pregnant with her former master’s child. She insisted she would rather see her child born in its father’s house, where it would be safe and fed. She granted both permission on terms of one-year contracts, though she ordered the woman’s child and any other child fathered by the master would be born free, a bastard and not a slave.

Everything she did, she did to bring freedom to her people, and yet some longed for the reassurance of chains.

Her distress must have been plain on her face, because Missandei leaned forward and quietly suggested she retire for the day. She nearly agreed, until Daario walked in, dragging a girl along by the arm. He pulled her to the base of the steps and shoved her forward, clearly intending her to fall to her knees.

Instead, the girl caught herself easily, turning her brief stumble into an elegant bow.

Not a curtsy, Daenerys noted. It had been years since she had been to Braavos, but she very much doubted that in that time the city had adopted a fashion where women wore baggy breeches and boys’ doublets.

“Your grace,” the creature, still bowing, greeted courteously, like a gallant youth and not a prisoner-in-waiting.

“Stand up,” Daenerys commanded. “Let me look at you.”

The girl rose, staring Daenerys dead in the face.

She was a small thing, perhaps even shorter than Daenerys herself, and little more than skin and bones. She had a tangled snarl of carrot-coloured hair barely reaching her chin, and her face was flat and freckled. She had no beauty to speak of, but there was something about her – the quick, graceful way she moved, and her unblinking, almost luminous eyes.

 _She is more cat than woman,_ Daenerys thought to herself. Cats were most dangerous when they were still and staring.

“What do you call yourself?” she asked, looking down the end of her nose.

“Ireyne, if you please.”

“Ireyne,” Daenerys repeated. “I understand, Ireyne, that you’ve been speaking of my late brother, Rhaegar of House Targaryen, Crown Prince of the Seven Kingdoms.”

“I have, your grace,” Ireyne confirmed, her servile smile giving no hint of the filthy lies she had been spreading.

“You seem very young, Ireyne,” Daenerys remarked. “My brother was murdered years before you were ever born, and to my knowledge he never visited Braavos. I find it odd that a young Braavosi such as you should presume to know so much about a prince of Westeros.”

Ireyne grinned with all her teeth. “Ah, well, you’ve missed the mark there, because I am not Braavosi. I was born in Maidenpool, the pearl of the riverlands.”

In spite of herself, Daenerys felt a flicker of interest. The riverlands were part of Westeros, which meant the girl before her was one of her own rightful subjects.

“A Westerosi?” she asked, arching an eyebrow. “And what house do you belong to?”

Ireyne cocked her head. “Do you mean what house rules Maidenpool? That would be House Mooton. Their sigil is a red salmon. If you mean of what house I am a member, though, you show me too much esteem. I’m just an ordinary girl.”

“An ordinary girl,” Daenerys echoed. “Tell me, how does an ordinary, lowborn girl from Maidenpool come to Meereen on a Braavosi ship, addressing the masses in High Valyrian?”

“I never said I stayed in Maidenpool,” Ireyne pointed out, shrugging unrepentantly. “I left Westeros as a child, when my father was killed.”

“In the War of Five Kings?” Daenerys had heard of the handful of pretenders tearing her realm apart.

Ireyne shook her head. “Oh no, before the war broke out. He was only a stonemason, my father. But there was a quarrel between my family and another, and my father was killed. When we heard the news, my mother and I were forced to abandon everything and flee, lest we should be killed next. We found a Braavosi salt merchant at the port, and he agreed to take us across the Narrow Sea.”

“To Braavos,” Daenerys completed.

“To Braavos,” Ireyne agreed. “We heard it was prosperous and civilised. The only Free City that deserved the name.”

Daenerys wondered if she made up the last part to please her. It was a compelling tale, but it did not explain why the girl had come here. “If you were so fond of the city, why would leave it for one in disarray, fighting for the freedom Braavos already possesses?”

“I had no choice,” said Ireyne. “I had to flee Braavos.”

“Another family enmity?” Daenerys suggested. “You seem a quarrelsome lot.”

Ireyne shook her head. Slowly, she took a seat on the lowest step, propping one hand up on her knee and tilting her head back in remembrance.

“When I came to Braavos as a girl, I struggled to find work,” she recounted. “My mother took in sewing; there was none who could stitch so well as her. But I had no talent there. And for a girl who cannot sew, there is only the market or the brothel.”

“Which one was it for you?” Daenerys asked, leaning forward.

“Oh, neither,” said Ireyne, putting a hand up and turning her head away in denial for a moment before looking back. “I realised there were far more options for a clever youth than a clever maid, so I cut my hair and dressed as a boy.” She plucked at her breeches. “For a lad with my talents, there was never a shortage of work to be found, all over the hundred isles. I did it all, and I was good at it, until finally, I found a position in the Sealord’s Palace as a clerk in his household. I rose quickly up those ranks, gaining the recognition of even the Sealord himself. But the flower that blooms largest and brightest is the first to be plucked.”

“What happened?” asked Daenerys, rapt. Ireyne’s mannerisms, her speech, reminded Daenerys of the mummers’ performances she remembered attending as a child in Braavos. If nothing else, the girl was a great storyteller.

“Another clerk grew jealous, and he studied me to find my weakness. He discovered the truth of my sex, and he made it known.” Ireyne sniffed sadly, wringing her hands. “Another time, another year, the Sealord might have forgiven me, for he is mostly a liberal man, but at that time there was great tension in Braavos and he saw enemies everywhere. He was convinced I had nefarious motives, and I had to run once again, for fear he would imprison me and torture me to death. I snuck out to the harbour. Knowing Westeros was lost to me and the other Free Cities hotbeds of slavery, I chose to come here, knowing a city fighting for freedom is better than one complacent in its cruelty.”

“And what of your mother? How did she take this?” Daenerys asked.

Ireyne’s hand, which had been outstretched theatrically, wilted, and for a moment she was just a small, lonely girl. When she answered, she spoke into her own lap. “She died years ago, your grace. They’ve all died.”

Daenerys did not know who exactly were once Ireyne’s _they_ , but it made her think of Irri and Rakharo and Ser Barristan, of her parents and Viserys and Rhaegar.

_Rhaegar._

She stiffened, then reset her impassive queenly mask.

“This does nothing to explain why you were speaking against my brother in the ports,” she reminded Ireyne, pinning her with a glare.

Or attempting to pin her, at least. The girl just smiled, unbothered once again.

“They wanted to know more of Westeros.” She shrugged. “Some knew the truth of Mad King Aerys, but few knew the truth of Prince Rhaegar.”

“And what is this so-called truth?” Daenerys asked, eyes narrowing. The _truth_ of Rhaegar was that he was better than her father, better than Viserys, and did not deserve to have his memory besmirched so far from his home.

“That he abducted a young girl,” Ireyne stated simply.

Daenerys scoffed. She knew those tales, at least, and Ireyne was distorting them. “My brother loved his Lady Lyanna. And she loved him in turn.”

“Do you know that for sure?” Ireyne asked, cocking her head.

“Do _you?_ ” Daenerys retorted. “My brother Viserys had the story from our loyal knights. You are a common girl, born in the riverlands years after they both died. What could you know of their feelings?”

The girl dropped her pensive gaze to the floor. She thought for a moment and then nodded to herself.

“You have a point, your grace,” she conceded. “I don’t know how they felt, either of them. No one living does. I can only apply mine own reasoning to the case. It may be that Lyanna Stark loved her handsome prince when he took her away from betrothal to a boor. Maybe she ran with him willingly, stars in her eyes.”

Ireyne’s eyes snapped back up to meet Daenerys’s. The pleasant smile had dropped, and only the thinnest of veils covered her outrage.

“But do you imagine she _stayed_ willing?” she asked. “Her father and brother went to King’s Landing to take her back, and the Mad King executed their men, and then he cooked Rickard Stark alive in his armour and made Brandon Stark strangle himself to death trying to save him, all for naught. Your father laughed as they died. He thought it was a clever little game. And when they were dead, he sent word to Jon Arryn in the Eyrie to send him Ned Stark’s head, so that the boy couldn’t go out and seek vengeance.” Ireyne smiled a bitter smile. “And when Ned Stark went to Dorne to rescue his little sister, he had to fight his way through the Kingsguard your Prince Rhaegar had guarding the tower. Tell me, your grace, do you think by that point those knights were keeping him out or keeping her in?”

She wanted to argue. The girl was only speculating. But Daenerys thought back to the day Drogo killed Viserys. She had felt nothing as he’d done it, had only watched it done and known Viserys had brought it on himself and that she would finally be free of him. Had Lyanna Stark felt the same about her brothers, or had she mourned for them in her Tower of Joy?

“Would you blame Rhaegar for the sins of his father?” she finally replied, but she found her voice was hoarse.

Ireyne’s lip curled. “Rhaegar didn’t. He went to war to defend Aerys and his claim, even knowing he was a madman who killed his _beloved’s_ family. He abandoned his own to do it – his wife, her little children. Do you think Rhaegar ever repented everything that led him, his family, and the realm to that point?”

Daenerys could not answer that.

“He might not have been mad,” Ireyne concluded, shaking her head, “but a man need not be mad to be terrible. Those he swore to love and protect – his people, his family, and his Lady Lyanna – he brought them all to ruin. I would sooner see such a man dead on the Trident than sitting the Iron Throne.”

Daario, who had stood silent during this exchange, was at Ireyne’s side in an instant, pulling out his knife and pointing it under her chin.

“And is the same true of the Queen?” he hissed. “Would you see her dead, too?”

Ireyne made no move to defend herself, only watched Daario appraisingly for an instant and then slid her gaze back to Daenerys, as if to ask if the Queen would order her death. She seemed little concerned by the prospect.

The girl plainly had no fear.

Daenerys raised a hand. After a moment Daario dropped his blade and took a step back, still glaring at Ireyne.

Daenerys rose from her bench, making all her guards stand on high alert. She walked down the stone stairs, unhurrying, until she stood only two steps higher than the girl. From this distance, she could see the girl was even shorter than her, and that her small brown eyes were bloodshot, with dark circles underneath.

“My father was mad,” said Daenerys. “My brother, you say, is terrible. And what about me? Do you believe me to be a monster?”

“Monsters don’t generally make a point of freeing slaves,” Ireyne pointed out. She said it as fact, not flattery, and that pleased Daenerys all the more.

“So you think me a good queen?”

At this Ireyne finally hesitated. “That depends on what you mean by good, really.”

Daenerys narrowed her eyes. “Are you about to tell me I should have not have killed any masters?”

Ireyne’s peal of laughter caught her off guard. “My queen, if you fed every unrepentant master in Slaver’s Bay to your dragons, I would worry about nothing but the dragons’ indigestion. You mistake my meaning.”

“The fighting pits, then,” Daenerys guessed. The reminder was an ache in her side.

“I don’t really mind the pits, to be honest. You’re still missing my point.” Ireyne shook her head. “Your grace, are you aware of the conditions in your barracks? Have you seen the children eating mud to fill their empty bellies?”

Daenerys swallowed. The reminder of her people – her _children_ – starving and dying filled her with more shame than stories of her family’s misdeeds ever could.

“I am doing all I can for them,” she said truthfully, though she knew it wasn’t enough.

“I don’t doubt it,” said Ireyne with perfect sincerity. “I think you are a good queen, I do. I’m just not sure you’re _good at_ being queen. Not yet, at least.”

Daenerys took a look over her shoulder at Missandei, stone-faced and hostile, then over at Daario, still watching Ireyne with open menace, his hand on the hilt of his blade. If she gave either of them leave, they would make clear to Ireyne the cost of her critique.

She wanted none of that.

“And what would you do, were you in my place?” she asked.

“Delegate.” Ireyne nodded.

“To whom?”

“Exactly! You have countless soldiers and sellswords, not to mention your advisors,” Ireyne jerked her chin up towards Missandei, “but precious few scribes and administrators. You need someone good at managing, to take over these day-to-day practicalities and leave you free to deal with your great matters.”

Daenerys had thought this herself, but finding people suited to the role was no easy task.

“The Meereenese who are experienced in these matters are against me and cannot be trusted with the responsibility. And my Unsullied and my Second Sons are warriors, not bookkeepers.”

Ireyne ran a thoughtful hand over her chin. “I can see how that would be difficult,” she agreed. “Then perhaps you should look elsewhere. Perhaps someone with experience in finance and politics. Someone who is familiar with the running of a ruler’s household.”

She put her hands behind her back and bounced on the balls of her feet, smiling ingenuously.

“As it happens, your grace,” she announced, genial, “I am looking for work.”

Daenerys fought to contain a laugh at the same time as Daario scoffed in disbelief.

From behind her, Missandei called down, “You were summoned here for speaking against the Queen’s own family, and now you seek a prominent position in her own household?”

“Sure. It’s House Targaryen I dislike, not the Queen.”

“I _am_ House Targaryen,” Daenerys stated eyes narrowing even as the corners of her lip twitched.

“Yes, but you’re better than the ones who came before you,” Ireyne insisted.

“How can you know? I might be just as cruel as you believe them to be. I have burned men and fed them to my dragon without blinking.”

“Yes, but those were slavers,” said Ireyne, unbothered. “As for me, since I got here I’ve told you to your face that your father and brother were cunts and that you need to do a better job ruling your city, and you’ve let me do it. Do you think Mad King Aerys would have let me talk this long?”

Daenerys could not answer for her father, but she tried to picture what Viserys would have done to the girl in her place. Her disgust at the thought showed on her face, plain as day.

“It might be you are as awful as they were,” Ireyne carried on. “I don’t think so, but maybe. But if you’re not, if you really do want to kill the masters and free the slaves, then I will serve.”

“And if I am?” inquired Daenerys, looking Ireyne in the eye. “If I am as terrible as the rest of my family, what will you do?”

Ireyne didn’t blink. “Then I will serve no longer.”

The girl was threatening. She was small and scrawny and no doubt hopelessly outmatched in a fight, but she carried herself with the confidence of one who could kill, who _would_ kill. Inviting her into her court would be inviting a dagger in the dark.

But she was plainly sincere about her support of Daenerys’s cause. Besides, she was clever and experienced, and a Westerosi by birth, as none of her people had been since Jorah’s banishment and Ser Barristan’s death.

Dragons did not bend, but cats were nimble little hunters.

“The Queen is weary, and wishes to retire to her chambers,” she announced, raising her voice so it would carry clearly across the throne room. “My advisors will accompany me. Ireyne, we will discuss your plans for improvement.”

Ireyne ducked her head, dipping into another courtly bow. Missandei descended, radiating quiet disapproval with every step, while Daario shook his head, but when Daenerys walked out they all followed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on tumblr [@arsenicandfinelace](http://arsenicandfinelace.tumblr.com/).


	3. The Swellsword

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> This chapter features some Daario/Daenerys, in the first and last section. If you want to avoid it, go directly to the lengthy middle section.

Daario Naharis was a simple man. He took his pleasures where they came – in the gallop of a charging warhorse, in the cry of a dying enemy, in the giggle Daenerys Stormborn let out as he tickled her thigh beneath silk sheets. Hizdahr zo Loraq could labour a day and a night and another day again and he still wouldn’t manage to pull such a sound from her, not even once.

He laid back and looked at her.

“How long until the _King_ of Meereen comes to claim my pillow?” he asked, teasing to hide his complaint.

She ran soothing, teasing fingers over his shoulder, amused. “Don’t be ridiculous. My marriage to Hizdahr is political. I think he’s smart enough to understand that.”

Did she honestly believe the man would never come to her rooms in the dead of night? A weak-willed coward he may be, but he had eyes in his head and she was the world’s most beautiful woman. And if she was prepared to sell her hand for her so-called peace, in time she’d consent to selling the rest of herself, too. If she didn’t, the carnage she feared would begin again.

“I think the Sons of the Harpy have stopped killing because their leader was made king.” This was what those whoresons did, insinuated themselves. Already they’d made their way into the Great Pyramid. Hizdahr might even seek to stake a claim to her womb, and once he had a son that was half dragon and half harpy, his men would open her throat.

But Daenerys only smiled in disbelief and stroked his beard. “Are you jealous?”

 _Yes._ “You think I’m petty enough to speak ill of a man just because he represents competition?” he evaded.

“I do.”

“You’re right,” he admitted, laughing sheepishly. His fears for her safety were one thing, but this was another. Why should he share her, when it was him she’d chosen for herself? “My motivations are entirely impure. Doesn’t make me wrong.”

He leaned over her for a kiss, intent on reminding her of why exactly he was in her bed and not Hizdahr zo Loraq. She allowed it for a moment, before pulling back.

“You told me yourself I can’t fight enemies within and without,” she reminded him, “so when my enemies come knocking, I need the city of Meereen behind me.”

He paused at that. “Ah, yes. That’s the other thing.”

“What other thing?” she asked, retreating to face him.

“You say yourself you don’t want enemies within, and yet just today you welcomed another enemy into your home with open arms.”

She gave him a look. “You’re talking about Ireyne.”

“No, I’m talking about the other admitted traitor you handed control over to,” he quipped, propping himself up one arm. “Of course I’m talking about Ireyne. The girl’s a danger.”

“Certainly,” she conceded effortlessly, “but I’m not convinced she’s a danger to _me_.”

“She told you to your face that your family was unworthy of the Iron Throne and that you were making a hash of governing the city.” The girl had been slight and unarmed, but Daario hadn’t lived this long because he underestimated people. When she’d been dragged before the throne, the first thing she’d done was count the guards, note their weapons, and look for points of exit. Whoever she was, she had experience with leaving difficult situations in a hurry.

“And she had arguments for both points,” Daenerys replied, sitting up, clutching her sheet to her chest. She looked over her shoulder at him. “Which reminds me.”

“Yes?” He traced a finger over the small of her back.

“I’ve given Ireyne rooms tonight, but she tells me she needs to return to her berth on the ship tomorrow to pick up her belongings. After, she wishes to tour the city to get a better idea of conditions. You will go with her, as a guard.”

He narrowed his eyes. “Oh, will I?”

“I’m not a complete fool,” she said patiently. “I’m not going to send her out unsupervised. If she does anything suspicious, you will report to me.”

“You can be sure of it.” He rolled onto his back, mind running. There was any number of dark alleys in the city, easy for a girl to disappear in. Not to mention the bay itself, if they were going aboard a ship.

Daenerys clearly saw his thought, and her face darkened.

“ _As I was saying_ ,” she continued, slipping into her regal tone, “you will report to me and bring her back to me. _Un_ harmed. And she says you must go incognito. You may conceal as many weapons as you like, but she asks that you have none visible, and that you not walk around my freedmen with a sellsword’s swagger. She worries you’ll frighten them.”

“She asks that I barely arm myself and that I not be on my guard. Anything else? Would she like me to be blindfolded?” He shook his head. “You should slit her throat now and be done with it. If you want someone clever, you can ship one in from the Free Cities. Don’t risk your life with the little snake.”

“I chose her,” she said. “I don’t need your approval of my household, and if you take matters into your own hands, _you_ will be the traitor, and treated as such.”

He thought back to Mossador, the stupid little freedman who had believed Mhysa would pardon him for killing that master until the moment his head rolled.

“I will accompany the traitoress,” he promised, “and watch you marry Hizdahr zo Loraq, and stand guard as you treat with the Great Masters.”

Slowly, he pulled her back down onto the bed and rolled her beneath him. She wrapped her arms around his neck and allowed him to kiss her.

“Good,” she breathed, tangling a hand in his hair.

“But I will also advise you,” he added. “On the day of the Great Games, gather all the Great Masters and Wise Masters and Worthy Masters you can find, and your clever little girl, too, and slaughter them all.”

Daenerys’s eyes, which had fluttered shut, slammed open.

“I am a queen,” she intoned, voice hard, “not a butcher.”

He patted her hair. “All rulers are either butchers or meat.”

She would find that out for herself soon enough, and he’d be ready when she did.

-

He’d thought to wake her too early to put her on the back foot, but she’d already risen and dressed by the time he knocked on her door. A passing maid squeaked that she had gone down to wait for him.

He found her standing at the gates with her back to him, her head ducked and one hand resting on the wall. She jumped when he shook her by the shoulder. He hadn’t taken her for the type to be caught unawares.

“Girl,” he hailed, stone-faced.

“Man,” she responded, shaking her head to clear her thoughts and glancing sidelong at him. “I asked that you not be visibly armed.”

Daario’s hand went to the voluptuous hilt of the dagger at his belt. “I’m not going anywhere without this one.”

“No?” Ireyne nodded understandingly, then leaned against the wall and looked around blankly. “Well, then, what shall we do all day to entertain ourselves? Do you have any dice?”

“Don’t get smart,” he warned.

“You’re not going anywhere without that ugly blade, and I’m not going anywhere with it. I suppose we’re stuck here. Would you like to learn some Braavosi sea shanties?”

She opened her mouth to sing, but he cut her off. “I’m meant to _guard_ you. How would you have me do that without weapons?”

Ireyne pushed off from the wall and looked him over. “You have a knife in each boot and one up your left sleeve. You also have a lead bludgeon in your pocket, unless you’re very happy to see me. All those will do if called for, and they don’t intimidate the citizens I’ll be meeting.”

Daario smiled in spite of himself. He hailed a passing servant and handed over his knife, warning him under his breath of what would happen if he didn’t take it directly to his rooms. Then he turned back to Ireyne.

“You have sharp eyes for a banker,” he commented, watching her carefully.

“Yes.” She smiled blandly, turning to survey the gates. “People don’t ride through the streets, do they? I was offered a litter to carry me, but I can’t think of anything worse, so we’ll go on foot if you don’t mind.”

That was fine by him. Animals spooked easily and she could easily sneak her fellow Harpies in as litter bearers.

They walked in silence down to the docks, Ireyne mostly watching the people, Daario mostly watching her. They came upon a white-sailed caravel, and before they could make it all the way up the gangplank, a gangly teenaged sailor popped up, calling out apologies in bastard Valyrian.

“Lady, lady, lady,” he stammered, “she is gone!”

The mention of an escaped co-conspirator had Daario reaching for the dagger he’d removed from his belt, but it didn’t seem to bother Ireyne much. “Oh. No, that’s fine.”

The boy was not soothed. “She left the ship last night, walking as proud as a queen, and when I tried to stop her she gave me such a look and carried on anyways. I could not stop her!”

“It’s fine,” Ireyne said, putting up a reassuring hand, “I know.”

“How do you know?” the sailor asked, baffled.

“I just do,” she said with a breezy smile. “Don’t worry, she’ll turn up. Actually, I came to collect my things. I’ve found a place to stay.”

“Oh, good.” The sailor beamed. “We sail in the morning, and the captain worried about leaving you alone and defenceless.”

Daario scoffed. The bitch was never defenceless; he knew the type.

Ireyne was deaf to this and made her way onto the ship with the sailor, ignoring Daario as he followed them to the living quarters. The sailor produced a key and unlocked a door, letting them into a comfortable, richly furnished room.

Daario whistled in mock awe. “The finest cabin, eh? Nothing but the best for dear Ireyne.” The Masters were plainly generous.

“This is the captain’s room,” Ireyne explained, heading for a chest, to which the sailor produced another key. “I rented a berth in the belly of the ship. I just paid for the right to store something important in here.”

Lifting the lid, she leaned into the chest until her head disappeared from sight. A moment later, she popped up again holding a long package wrapped in blue-grey wool. She quickly pulled open the twine holding it shut and the fabric fell away, revealing a gleaming bravo’s sword.

Daario instinctively fell into fighting stance. How fucking stupid could he get, allowing her to insist he disarm himself and then luring him in like this. He smoothly pulled the knife from his sleeve, preparing to strike first, but before he could take a step in her direction he caught sight of her face.

She was smiling. Not the smug, sinister smile people got when they believed they’d outsmarted him and were about to try to kill him. A giddy smile. A girlish smile.

She grasped the sword by the hilt, lifting it up to admire the way the light filtering in through the window made the blade gleam.

“Isn’t it beautiful?” she breathed. She looked over her shoulder at him for confirmation, but when she saw the dagger in his hand she soured.

“Oh, put that away,” she said with a roll of her eyes. “Do you really think this would be my clever plan for killing you? Luring you into a small ship’s cabin and then pulling out my weapon while I’m on the floor with my back turned? Don’t insult me. I just needed to pick it up before they leave.”

The sheer unbothered contempt of her had his knife arm wilting. He didn’t trust her, of course, but there was such a thing as professional courtesy, and he almost wanted to apologise for underestimating her doubtless talents in assassination.

“Sweet little blade. Good for picking your teeth,” he observed, tucking his knife backing into his sleeve, and he got a nasty look for it. “I wouldn’t think a _clerk_ would have much use for a sword, but I suppose you’d want to stick to one made for skinny arms.”

“Like I told the Queen, I was a clerk in the Sealord’s Palace,” she reminded him, standing and tucking the blade into her belt. “The First Sword himself taught me the Braavosi water dance. Not for long, though. I had to run after a few months.” She sighed, then shook herself. “Shall we?”

 _If that’s all the training you’ve had in fighting, girl, I’ll suck my own cock._ He followed her above deck, refusing to step aside politely as she bid the crew farewell with backslapping and well-wishing, and then followed her down the gangplank and back through the city walls. Still she walked slowly, scanning every alley and rathole.

“Looking for your friend?” he inquired, watching her carefully.

“Hm?” She led them to the slums, not looking his way.

“That sailor said you had a little friend on board who decided to make her own way. I just wonder if she has any plans to join us.” _In an alley, wearing a golden mask. A Daughter of the Harpy, why not?_

“Oh, you mean Flint.” The corners of Ireyne’s mouth twitched. “Right. She’ll find us when she wants to.”

He stored the name Flint away, resolving to look into her, though that was no doubt an alias. “Meereen is a big city. You must have planned where to meet up.”

Ireyne shrugged. “No, not really. But she and I know each other well. Very well. Won’t be hard to track each other.”

Daario flexed the muscles of his calves, feeling the knives there as he followed behind her.

You could smell the slums before you could see them. Thousands upon thousands of freedmen, stacked on top of each other like corpses in a grave and twice as foul. Naked children lurched about with swollen bellies. Girls with desperate eyes offered him their cunts for a handful of pennies, and lowered the price when he walked on. Old men, those with the soft skin of former tutors and house slaves, huddled in corners, faces vacant. The stench would have sent a weaker man to his knees to retch.

That was the thing the Queen couldn’t know: freedom smelled of human shit.

Ireyne watched it all with her face carefully blank, not even bringing up a hand to cover her nose, hopping nimbly over puddles of waste in her path. She hailed a whore, no older than her, and when the girl watched her suspiciously, Ireyne produced a silver and spoke a few words. The girl’s eyes went round and she snatched it in grubby paws before beckoning them both to follow. Daario glared at Ireyne’s back as they ventured through a shaded alleyway. Following a strange whore through the backstreets in a city where the Queen’s name could get them killed – if she wasn’t a cunning assassin laying a trap for him, she was the stupidest child who ever lived.

She led them from the main footpath and further into the belly of the beast, to a space no more than fifteen paces in either direction but crowded with pallets haphazardly tented with sails and flags. Some ancient women huddled together, along with a few whores who worked at night and slept in the daytime.

Ireyne knelt by their side, carefully manoeuvring her sword so it did not strike the women or rip up their already tattered bedclothes, inquiring about them.

The women watched her hesitantly, this strange girl dressed as a boy, buying her way into their hovel to ask why they were so miserable. Him standing over them with his arms crossed wouldn’t put them any more at their ease, either.

But then a little _meow_ split the air, and everyone turned to see a little grey cat step forward. A few of the younger girls lit up at the sight of it, but none more than Ireyne.

“There you are,” she greeted, scooping up the cat and settling her in her lap. “This is Flint.”

 _Flint_. He almost laughed. This was the mysterious ally who’d wandered off the ship like she thought herself queen. Daario could believe it; she began to groom herself with the same haughty perfection as Daenerys herself.

“You can pet her,” Ireyne offered the whore who’d led them here. “She’ll let you.”

The girl slowly reached out her hand, stroking the cat between her ears. When she received a low purr in reply she made a delighted sound and other hands went up. They all took a turn, almost cheering when the cat presented her belly for rubs. After a few minutes, Ireyne asked again about conditions and this time a chorus of voices went up.

Daario, over a long career of fighting men as dull as they were vicious, had learned to tune out most of what people said while keeping an ear peeled for anything that hinted at danger. He heard the word “barracks” several times, but only when they spoke of living conditions. Anger rippled across one woman’s face, but she was recounting nothing more than the abuses her former master had visited on her.

He did listen closely when they spoke of attacks, but they mostly just complained of fights and thefts and rapes among the freedmen. They shied away from talk of the Sons of the Harpy, denying any knowledge of them, any at all, really, they just wanted to live safely and be fed, and shouldn’t the Queen help with that?

Ireyne promised most solemnly that she would, that Ireyne herself would advise the Queen, and Daenerys would do all she could to improve their conditions.

 _And she’ll clap her hands and all the shit will wash away and the streets will be lined with gold instead_. Daario rolled his eyes. His mother had told him once that all children were tyrants, never satisfied with what they had, always demanding more and more of their mothers and offering nothing in return. Their Mhysa gave them freedom, and they wanted featherbeds and roast quail for supper.

But Ireyne swore anyways, and when they left the rat’s nest, cat in tow, and were back in the centre of the slums, she bit her lip for a second before asking him to show her to the barracks.

‘Barracks’ was, to Daario’s mind, overly generous as a name. Some had been put in abandoned storehouses, mostly the women with their little freed children. The men tended to be put in the makeshift buildings. The finest and most ambitious of these had hastily sculpted walls of clay and straw roofs that wouldn’t last past the first of the city’s infrequent great rains. The others were much like the whores’ den they had just visited, little more than canvas tents on wooden props, little protection from the night winds. All were crowded, even during the day, as many could find no work.

And still Ireyne encouraged the residents to crowd around her, cautiously ignoring Daario at her back, and tell their tales. Her cat made the rounds, eliciting smiles from women and children and even from hard-faced old men, while its mistress spoke to them. She heard their gripes and listened evenly to their demands, nodding from time to time. Sometimes she invoked the Queen’s name, and at first this drew a few groans, but by the end they watched her with naked hope, and when she left they clutched her arms, eyes pleading.

“I’ve noticed,” Daario announced, as they headed out of their fifth barracks, “that you wear that little sword of yours on your hip.”

Ireyne looked down at her blade, then up at the sun in the sky. The day had been long since she’d retrieved it from the ship. “You’re astute, Daario Naharis, and don’t let anyone tell you otherwise.”

Daario made a face, then carried on. “By that I mean that you don’t feel the need to conceal your weapons like you made me do mine.”

“Wouldn’t fit up my sleeve,” she said without missing a beat.

“Aren’t you worried people will be frightened off by you, like they were by me?” he challenged.

She scoffed at that, resting her hand on the hilt.

“ _You_ are tall. And strong. And hostile. People look at you and they see a man who could hurt them. I needed to tamp down on that today.” She gestured to herself. “Me, though? I’m just a girl. It wouldn't matter if I dragged around a Valyrian steel greatsword. People look at me and they see a victim, not a threat.”

He looked her over, trying to see through the eyes of an untrained sheep. To the unexpecting, she didn’t look like much, it was true. But he wasn’t a sheep. He was Daario Naharis, and he could see the bloodstains on her a mile away.

“And how many of those people learned the truth the hard way?” he asked.

Her smile grew, but she said nothing, only turned on her heel.

“Another barracks?” he groaned.

She shook her head. “I’ve had enough misery for one day. Back to the Pyramid.”

He wanted to run there at full speed so he could bathe and not be thrown out of Daenerys’s bedchamber on account of stink. Still, he forced himself to take a winding route, through main roads and back streets, the better to shake off any of Ireyne’s masked friends. If she noticed, she said nothing of it, content to follow him.

When they passed the Great Pit of Daznak, Ireyne stopped and looked at it, craning her neck to take it all in.

“So explain the problem with the pits to me,” she said, curious and inoffensive.

He stepped forward cautiously. When she didn’t take her eyes off the high walls of the pit, he watched it, too.

“The Queen doesn’t like them,” he answered.

“Because?”

“‘Human cock fighting,’ she calls it. Before she came, the pits were stocked with slave fighters. Some trained since childhood, lived for the pits. Others were thrown in there for whatever offence. They were the ones fighting lions with wooden swords.”

“And the Queen doesn’t want to feed slaves to lions, I take it.” Ireyne cocked her head.

“The Queen is,” he groped for the right word, “particular. Hates anything with the whiff of slavery.”

“That’s not a bad thing,” she pointed out.

“Of course not,” he said, “but it can be limiting. The Masters, they want the pits open for their own reasons, we all know that. But the people want that too.”

“What, they want to attend or they want to take part?” Her brow furrowed.

“Both. Fighting pits are entertainment. Everyone loves some bloodsport. Aren’t there any in Westeros?”

“Tourneys are all about jousting and mêlées with blunted weapons,” she explained. “Sometimes people die, but only by accident.”

He sniffed. “Sounds piss boring. But it’s the fighters, too. The fighting slaves, the real fighting slaves, they could do well for themselves. The best reached fame and fortune.”

“For the Masters,” Ireyne completed.

“For themselves as well,” he insisted. “I started out in the pits, you know. I was twelve when I was sold to the pits. I hadn’t hit my growth then, but being small was good for me. It meant—”

“-––the target was smaller.”

He looked over at her. She was smiling fondly, lost in some memory. Her eyes snapped back to him. “And I bet you were quick and cunning.”

“You know it,” he agreed with a proud smirk. “I grew eventually, but you never truly lose the small and quick mindset.”

“No, you don’t,” she said, shaking her head with every word. “That’s why I like water dancing so much.”

“Pah!” He threw his head back. “Overrated.”

“No, it’s not!” she insisted, bunching her hands at her side.

“It _is._ Those fancy tricks look good in the pit, I’ll grant you that. But when you’re in a fight, a real fight, you don’t want to dance around bleeding them dry. Too much time to make a mistake. You want to be in and out in an instant.”

“Well, I’m _sorry_ the First Sword didn’t want to teach me street fighting,” she said, dropping into a ludicrous apologetic bow.

“You go to a First Sword, fighting pretty is all you get,” he warned. “If you want to fight _smart_ , you need to find a swellsword, someone who’s had thousands try to kill him and none succeed.”

“Oh, like you?” She crossed her arms, looking sceptical. “Are you going to train me?”

“Tomorrow, first light, in the courtyard.”

“Fine.”

“Fine.”

He turned on his heel and headed to the Great Pyramid, Ireyne and the cat at his heels. He was halfway home before he realised he’d offered to train a possible agent of the Sons of the Harpy to kill.

-

“Well?” Daenerys slipped in his ear as he entered her apartments. He and Ireyne had caught her just sitting down to dinner with Missandei – the cat had ventured off on its own – and she had clapped her hands and demanded plates be brought for the two of them.

“No visible treason so far,” he was forced to admit.

“Wonderful.” She returned to her table, taking a seat. “Shall we discuss your findings over a drink?”

Ireyne, halfway into the room when the Queen spoke, was at the sideboard in the blink of an eye, collecting the pitcher and cups before Missandei could even rise from her chair. She padded back to the table, setting the glasses down noiselessly and pouring Daenerys a drink without spilling a drop.

“So swift,” Daenerys observed, taking hold of the stem.

“I was a cupbearer once,” Ireyne announced in a muted voice. “A good cupbearer is diligent as the sunrise and invisible as a ghost.”

“Was this in Braavos?” Daenerys asked, receiving an indistinct hum in reply. “Did you enjoy the work? Was your master good to you?”

“Those are two different questions, your grace,” Ireyne answered, recovering gracefully when Missandei covered her cup in polite refusal. “The work wasn’t terrible. There were parts of it I liked. But my master?” Her eyes went hard. “I hated him. I wish I had killed him when I had the chance.”

Daenerys’s back stiffened, but Ireyne didn’t stare her down, only moved to fill Daario’s cup. Daenerys moved to sip her wine, likely to dispel the suddenly tense air in the room, but Daario’s hand shot out to stop her.

“Maybe we shouldn’t be drinking anything she has to offer,” he advised, watching Daenerys but jutting his chin towards Ireyne. He should have put a stop to it sooner. It was just one mistake after another with him.

“Why?” Ireyne asked. “You think I’d poison the Queen? Here? Now?”

She was good at looking offended, but he felt no need to soothe her hurt feelings.

“Our Queen might feel safer if you were to drink first,” Missandei suggested, all gentle tones and suspicious eyes.

Ireyne’s lips thinned, but she set down the fourth cup and poured all the way up to the brim. She lifted the drink up, but instead of taking a sip, she addressed them all, voice deliberate with fury.

“Let me make one thing clear. I know you all doubt me. Frankly, at this point, you’d be stupid not to. But I am a guest in this household. I have slept under the Queen’s roof, eaten her food and drunk of her wine. You can doubt my name, my history, my intentions, all of it, but never, _ever_ accuse me of violating guest right.”

She downed her wine in one, gulping noisily and then setting it back down with a clatter, wiping the back of her hand across her mouth.

Daario watched her intently. The girl veiled herself in polite smiles and flawless lies, but this, this was the most honesty he was ever likely to get from her. Whatever she might seek to do to the Queen beneath the blue sky, in this pyramid she wouldn’t harm her.

It was Daenerys who broke the silence.

“Apologies,” she said softly but with authority. “I’m sure you understand that it is difficult to trust my advisors these days. But it is reassuring to know you value guest right so highly.”

“Yes,” was all Ireyne said, still nearly shaking with tension. Her eyes were striking and intense, making her plain face less so.

“You’re right, so long as you are under my roof, in my service, I must choose to trust you, if not to serve me well at least not to murder me.”

Ireyne nodded. Queens didn’t apologise, but they didn’t say _you’re right_ much either. She shot Daario a look, and he shifted closer to her to make room for Ireyne around the table.

“So,” Daenerys said as Ireyne took a seat, “tell me your findings.”

“The slums, your grace, are a mess. It’s filthy, and it’s crowded, which means they’re breeding grounds for crime and for disease. Permanent living quarters must be built as soon as possible. Wood’s expensive here, isn’t it?”

“Very,” said Missandei. “We are far from any forests.”

“It was the same in Braavos.” Ireyne nodded. “I know you’re re-opening the fighting pits, but maybe you could tear down one or two of the smaller ones and use the stones for housing. The land those pits stood on would be vacant.”

Daenerys smiled slightly. She’d love nothing more than to have a concrete reason to destroy at least one pit. “I will take it under advisement.”

“Good. I’ll think more on it myself. But the biggest issue is food. They’re starving.”

“I do provide for the freedmen,” Daenerys pointed out, pursing her lips.

“Yes, but how many visit these food lines?” Ireyne questioned. “Most are convinced the Sons of the Harpy lurk in the food lines, so they don’t dare go. Then the brave few snatch it up and distribute it at a cost.”

Daenerys looked to Daario, and he had to nod.

“Security must be increased,” Daenerys decreed.

“And a more defensible location chosen,” Ireyne added. “One more central to them, if we can find it. The longer their trek, the more they fear being waylaid.”

“Tomorrow we’ll scout for locations,” Daario said, receiving a pleased look from Daenerys.

_Yes, see, we can play nicely._

“This is a good start,” Daenerys decided. She lifted up a leg of braised chicken, and everyone took that as their cue to start eating. “Now, let me tell you about the day’s audiences.”

They ate. They drank. Reports of the day shifted into tales of days past, some fond, some screamingly funny. Even Missandei cracked a real smile once or twice. Finally, Daenerys rose and announced she was off to bed. Daario saw Ireyne notice that he followed the Queen as she left, but she seemed neither surprised nor concerned by it.

Did she have a man of her own, he wondered as he followed Daenerys to her bedchamber. Did she let any of the Sons fuck her, or maybe the Braavos story was true and she’d had a sweetheart. She might have. Little in the way of looks, but the water dancing would have made her lithe and flexible.

“I take it you liked her?” Daenerys asked, allowing him to unplait her hair, which he did while standing too close, just as she liked.

“Well enough,” he said, non-committal. She didn’t respond, but he felt compelled to add, “And at least she’s good company over a drink. All the rest are so serious.”

“I suppose that is part of her charm,” said Daenerys, shaking out her silvery hair.

“We should invite her to join us here some evening,” he suggested without thinking.

Daenerys paused. “Join us?”

“For a drink.” He smirked. “The rest of them are so proper all the time. We might have more fun just the three of us.”

Daenerys considered this for half a second. “I’m not sure Ireyne is interested in the kind of _fun_ you offer.”

Daario thought it wouldn’t hurt to ask. Then he thought again and realised it would hurt him _very_ much if he asked without his Dragon Queen’s permission.

“Besides,” she continued, dropping her dress and wrapping her arms around his neck, “I think we have plenty of fun just the two of us, don’t we?”

Daario chuckled and led her to the bed.

Fun indeed.

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> You can find me on tumblr [@arsenicandfinelace](http://arsenicandfinelace.tumblr.com/).


	4. Missandei I

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> Overdue. I have no explanation for the delay other than *gestures vaguely at everything*

“The Queen is delighted with her.”

Missandei struggled to report this neutrally. In her time in Astapor under Master Kraznys, she had repeated any number of horrors in polite, unflinching tones. Talk of Ireyne of Maidenpool’s rapid accumulation of favour was no sharper a knife to her soul than talk of the perfunctory slaying of infants.

But it was wound in a fresh, unexplored area, and the sting of it irritated her in ways she was unused to.

Grey Worm took this report in stoically, but she knew his moods by now and could see the displeasure deep in his eyes.

“What does she do to delight her so?” he asked, staring pensively at the ceiling.

A superstitious woman might have suggested witchcraft, but Missandei considered it carefully.

“She is,” she mused, “ _dynamic_. Clever and quick, full of ideas and suggestions. I believe the Queen is pleased with this. She says the girl has initiative. Many of her counselors have been reactive, from Jorah the traitor to Ser Barri––”

She cut herself off too late. A slow exhale and a crease of his brow were proof enough that he still carried the shame of his perceived failure where the slain knight was concerned. He shook his head to clear himself of those thoughts.

“The Queen is strong,” he reminded her. “She needs no guidance from lesser men.”

“Where it concerns statecraft, she does not,” Missandei specified. “She hates to be dictated to where it concerns the fighting pits or her marriage, let alone her relations with the masters. But Ireyne fawns on her in these matters and assures her she is wise to be fierce with them.”

“This is true,” Grey Worm said reflexively.

“It is,” she agreed, “but I do not trust she means it. No, her suggestions are practical. She suggests how to improve the city, distributing food and cleaning waste.”

“This is bad?” he questioned. Not doubtful of her, never doubtful of her. Merely uncertain what he was missing.

“It is if she can’t be trusted, which she cannot. Even if she is not here to slay our Queen, which she may be, as a spy she could devastate us. Her Grace is so pleased to have someone here to take on these practical matters and look after her children’s wellbeing as she takes on Astapor and Yunkai, and denies her nothing. The girl even has access to the treasury, so that she may know the scope of her resources for these undertakings. If she reports even half of this to the masters, we are all doomed.”

“Does no one speak to the Queen of these concerns?”

“Who? I have tried but she rebuffs me.” She spoke as gently as she could to soften the blow of yet another reminder. “She listened to Ser Barristan, but he is gone.”

Grey Worm’s mouth twisted a moment, then he set it again. She wished she knew how to settle his heart.

“What about the sellsword? He has her ear.”

That was true. Kraznys mo Nakloz always told the girls he owned it was only in bed that the powerful were receptive to probing and persuasion. The memory of it only sharpened her displeasure.

“He does,” she said, pinching a fold in her skirts. “But Daario Naharis has no interest in speaking against her. He is nearly as fond of her as the Queen.”

Grey Worm slowly turned to look at her. “Him? He trusts no one. If any would rid us of her, it is the sellsword. If any would dare disobedience to protect Her Grace, it is him.”

Missandei shook her head. “You have not met the girl yet. Ireyne conquers affections like the Queen conquers cities. It took her mere minutes to win over the Queen. I saw then that Daario disliked her, and when he was ordered to guide her around the city the next day, I confess I hoped he would do as he was forbidden and interrogate her sharply, though it would anger Her Grace. But he did not.”

“Perhaps he bides his time,” Grey Worm insisted.

Missandei rose to her feet, needing to pace the small length of Grey Worm’s sick chamber to rein in her discontent. “Two weeks she has been here, and he and she speak like old friends. Do you know what they do every morning? They train together in the yard.”

She turned on her heel just in time to see Grey Worm snap up into a sitting position. His face shuttered to hide his pain, as he had always been trained, but she rushed to his side anyways.

“He trains her?” he demanded, disbelieving. “She is a spy, likely an assassin, and he trains her to fight better? Shows her his weaknesses?”

He moved to rise out of bed. She put her hands on his arms, making soothing noises as she tried to coax him to lie down again.

“No, no,” he insisted, searching for his shirt and weapons, shrugging off her hands. “With me down here, the sellsword is our Queen’s only protector, and he has failed. I must go to her side before she is slain.”

Softly she pleaded him to get back in bed, to rest, but he refused, even as she saw his eyes go unfocused for a moment, a sign of blood rushing to his head too quickly. He was the best of the Unsullied, too disciplined to stagger on his feet, but she saw the rapid onset of pallor in his face and the tremor in his hands he struggled to hide from her.

She regretted what she had to say even before she said it.

“You are no good to her in this condition!”

He stopped.

She wished she did not have to speak the words aloud. She knew they hurt to hear. The Good Masters of Astapor had taken everything from him – his home, his family, his name, his body. They had hollowed him out to make him a perfect soldier and nothing else, nothing more. Now he was free of his chains, but he could never get back so much they had taken from him. It shamed him, as it shamed so many of his brothers, that they could not be husbands and fathers, could not take up a trade or plough a field. But they took pride in their soldiery. Despite it being forced on them, despite the horrible cost, they knew they were the best of fighters, and that could never be taken from them.

But now, if only for a time, it had been taken from Grey Worm. He who never tired, who never relented, he lay in bed all day. He could not protect his queen or command his men, only recuperate and hear dire reports of the outside world from Missandei.

There was one way in which Grey Worm believed himself a man, and she, of all women, reminded him that at the moment he lacked even that.

Nineteen languages she spoke, yet in none of them did she have the words to tell him that he was the first of men.

He allowed her to put him back in bed, though he could not meet her eyes as she did it.

“You are the Queen’s most important servant,” she told him as he laid his head on the pillow, eyes shut against his shame. Slowly he began to shake his head, but she rested a hand on his shoulder and he fell still. “You must recover fully, for her sake.” She leaned in closer. “And for mine.”

He opened his eyes, watching her intently. Even tired and unwell, his gaze held power over her.

“Over there,” he said, raising a finger to point to the table. “The knife.”

She looked over at the table, where a small, sheathed dagger lay next to a candlestick. “You cannot use it now.”

He shook his head and pointed again. “No. You take it.”

Her brow furrowed, but she went to the table and lifted it. Pulling it halfway out of its sheath, she examined it. She knew little of weapons as anything beyond a point in a list she’d recited for buyers, but she thought it well maintained. It looked sharp and shone in the weak, dusty sunlight.

Proximity to the Unsullied was not enough to teach her all she would need to know. “The Masters would not send an amateur. If the Queen is attacked, I could not defend her with this.”

“But you could defend yourself.” He was too proud, too self-contained, to beseech her, but his eyes did it for him. “As Commander of the Unsullied, this one concerns himself all hours of the day with how to protect Daenerys Stormborn. But as Torgo Nudho, I worry every second about Missandei of Naath.”

All that touched her in his words made her eyes burn and her throat swell, so she struggled to focus on what offended her instead. “You think I would save myself alone if our Queen were attacked? Would you have me turn and run?”

“No,” he said, and he smiled a little. “I know you are too brave for that, and you love our Queen too well. But if nothing else … I would have you be valiant to the end.”

She could not stay after that. He could say she was brave, but in that moment her feelings frightened her.

She moved to the door, but before she left, she lifted the dagger to her lips. Slowly she kissed the pommel, and she knew he understood.

-

She came upon the Queen, Hizdahr zo Loraq, Daario Naharis, and Ireyne of Maidenpool, all seated around the table in the Queen’s quarters. The Queen saw her and understood at once where she had been. After a moment of unspoken connection between the two, she turned back to listen to Hizdahr.

“The area is simply too crowded, and there are concerns for the people who wish to worship. The Great Masters understand that Lady Ireyne—”

“Not a lady.”

“—that _Mistress_ Ireyne endeavours to improve conditions in the city, and of course they support this, but must the food lines be assembled before the Temple of the Graces?”

“It’s a wide square, plenty of room for the crowds, and the good lines of sight mean the area can be patrolled effectively and visibly, which creates confidence enough to draw people in.”

“I have no doubt that you have considered the practicalities of it, mistress, but you must consider the aesthetics of it. Temple-goers are impeded in their routes. There are some that believe that, as the Temple of the Graces is where the Harpy is worshipped, this very public act is a way of thumbing one’s nose at the Sons of the Harpy.”

“When I thumb my nose, Master Hizdahr, I promise you, you’ll know.”

“Enough,” the Queen silenced them. “I recognise your concerns, Hizdahr. Tell me, do the Great Masters have any better suggestions of where to put the food lines?”

“The previous system, with an array of small ones—"

“—inspired no confidence,” she cut him off. “People turned to theft instead. If you were to move these great assemblies Ireyne is rolling out, where would you put them? I myself would say the pits, but you insist these are to be reopened.”

“There is plenty of room at the docks,” Hizdahr suggested.

“We already discussed that,” said Daario, gesturing between Ireyne and himself. “Not defensible at the best of times, and if we ever had to close the gates we’d be back where we started.”

Silence fell across the table for a moment. The Queen raised an eyebrow.

“No other suggestions?” she asked. “None? Then the temple it is. The next time the masters wish to bring a complaint before me, let them also bring a solution. One other than a return to the old ways.”

Hizdahr capitulated, and Missandei watched Ireyne and Daario exchange a triumphant look. She took pleasure in any defeat of the masters, but she chafed against another victory for Ireyne. The girl spoke so glibly, and never did the Queen check this tendency. Indeed she seemed to enjoy it, much like she did Daario’s lewd posturing.

“Since your grace is so good as to bring up the fighting pits, may I inquire if you are prepared to visit the pits with me?”

The Queen stiffened.

“Bad enough I allowed them to be opened, must I go in person to applaud politely as men are butchered for sport?”

“You must show you approve of it.”

“I do not approve of it.”

“Then you may feign you do,” Hizdahr explained. “This is how you will gain the people’s approval in turn.”

“She had the people’s approval until the Sons of the Harpy started murdering them in the street,” Daario noted, and no one missed how his eyes slid to Ireyne for a second, least of all Ireyne herself.

“Diplomacy is always precarious,” said Hizdahr, “but necessary.”

“Wise words indeed,” Missandei said with wide-eyed sincerity. “Have you considered writing a book, so you might spread your insights with the world?”

There was a choking sound, and she turned to see Ireyne wiping wine from the corner of her mouth, shoulders shaking. The Queen could scarcely restrain her smirk.

Hizdahr seemed to suspect Missandei had insulted him, but her smooth expression did not falter, so after a moment he smiled politely.

Turning back to the Queen, he continued. “Your grace is swift and decisive, I know that well. But as we have seen, striking suddenly and without mercy can lead to tragedy and error.”

His voice took on tinges of grief, and the Queen dropped her eyes, remembering. Missandei kept her face blank, remembering her quiet triumph at hearing the Masters beg as they were crucified; it was not a kind sentiment, she knew, but what kindness did she owe them?

Ireyne leaned forward, questioning.

“What tragedy? What error?”

Neither Hizdahr nor the Queen replied, and Missandei feared how Daario would choose to recount the matter, so she spoke up.

“When we were journeying from Astapor to Meereen, the Masters thought to intimidate the Queen by … _nailing_ slave children to mileposts.” She struggled to keep her tone even as she remembered the scores of children rotting in the hot sun. She saw Ireyne’s eyes narrow and her lip curl in disgust. “One hundred and sixty-three of them. When the city was taken, she ordered one hundred and sixty-three masters be crucified around the town square in retribution.”

Ireyne relaxed.

“Oh, _slavers_ ,” she said, as if this were no real loss. “What error could there be in that?”

All eyes slid to Hizdahr.

With solemn dignity, he said, “My father was among them.”

“I see.” Ireyne paused for a long moment, before looking him in the eye. “You do have my condolences for that. No child should see their father die. No matter their situation, no matter their age.”

Hizdahr accepted her regrets. Missandei waited for the Queen to change the subject, but he carried on. “In fact, he spoke out against the crucifixion of the children. He thought it criminal, and sought to put a stop to it, and yet he was killed in the same way, while some others who were not so opposed still live. So you see, Mistress Ireyne, even in the condemnation of _slavers_ , there must be restraint, or the good will be thrown out with the bad, and cooperation will be lost.”

He aimed those words at the Queen, who glared.

“I thank the noble Hizdahr zo Loraq for his wise council,” she said in the stiff way that warned of an oncoming storm.

“Just one thing I’m not sure I understand.”

Ireyne bit her lip, tapping her brow in confusion, before she found her words, shifting in her seat.

“What is it you mean when you say ‘good’ slavers?”

“There are some who are callous to their slaves, who work them to death or who abuse them unconscionably,” he explained, “but there are others who do try to be decent to those in their household, who value their hard work and skill, who think they have a duty to look after them.”

“But who still own them as they do a horse, or for that matter a plough,” Ireyne completed.

“The system is not perfect, I will be the first to confess,” Hizdahr admitted, “but the excesses and depravities are not so widespread as you may think.”

“But they are fully permissible under the law. The law says you may work them as hard as you like, even to death. You may rape them and sell their children. You may kill them for any offence, no matter how small, or even for no offence at all, if you wish to intimidate someone else.”

“I do not do such things,” Hizdahr insisted, “nor did my father.”

“Perhaps not. But by your own admission, he owned slaves. Children included, yes? Yes, I thought so. However hard he may have fought not to senselessly murder those children, he did not say a word against owning them, nor working them, nor selling them. A slaver is cruel no matter what, Hizdahr zo Loraq, because whether he is kind or vicious, he does not think of his slaves as people. He thinks of them as beasts of burden.”

Hizdahr foundered for a moment, which Missandei liked to see, but she noticed the Queen smiling approvingly at Ireyne.

Missandei would sooner cut out her tongue than speak in defence of Hizdahr zo Loraq, but she could not allow Ireyne to continue rising in favour unchecked. Her superior Westerosi attitude to slavery, when she had known nothing of its horrors, irritated.

“And is it any different in your own land?” she asked quietly. “You are Westerosi by birth, I believe.”

Ireyne watched her warily, searching for the trap in her words. “Westeros has no slaves. It’s been outlawed for thousands upon thousands of years.”

“I am aware.” Missandei nodded politely, before tilting her head meaningfully. “But I have heard some of how the people of Westeros live. Perhaps _you_ might explain some things to _me._ ”

“Go on, then.”

“These people … they are called the smallfolk, I am told?”

“They often are, yes.”

Had the lords chosen such a term because they believed or because they wanted the common folk to think themselves small?

“What rights does a lord hold over his smallfolk?”

“He has the right to tax him, either in coin or in goods such as grain, and to call fighting men for his armies. In return he owes them his protection.”

Missandei nodded thoughtfully. “Do they have a choice to fight in the army?”

“What?”

“Are they asked to join or ordered to join? If a man fit to fight refused, what should happen to him?”

“He would be brought along anyway.”

She did not ask the penalty if he tried to desert, but they both understood.

“As for protection, what is the extent of it?”

“How do you mean?”

“Is there a law stating his punishment if he knowingly abandons his people to their deaths? I know in any war there are many casualties. Is he obligated to pay reparations for any woman or child killed because he did not take pains to save them?”

“He is not.”

“What about protections against the lord? What punishment if a lord should force himself upon a woman of the smallfolk? Or if he should kill one? If a great lord murders a humble peasant, is he condemned for it?”

Ireyne’s eyes slid away, lost in some past incident. When she answered, her voice quavered with memory.

“No. No, when a great lord kills a peasant, no one raises a finger. They’ll blame the peasant for his own murder, even if they know he’s innocent, so they don’t have to blame each other.”

Missandei did not relent, though Ireyne clearly struggled.

“So if a lord of Westeros can force a common man to his death in a war he did not agree to fight, if he can work him to death, if he can kill him, if he can rape with impunity, then how precisely is the Westerosi lord so far above the Essosi master? I do not doubt some are benevolent, as some masters are _good_ , but surely the cruelty inherent in the arrangement is just as undeniable.”

She took a sip from her water. Ireyne stared at her as if seeing her for the first time.

“Maybe … I don’t know. Maybe you’re right.”

Daenerys nodded approvingly at Missandei this time.

“You never falter in your wisdom, nor the sharpness of your mind,” she praised. “I had not thought of it like that. But that is Westeros as it is. When I take it, things will change. We will not content ourselves with the old injustices under my banner.”

From any other, it would have sounded like mindless boasting, but from Daenerys Stormborn, such a pronouncement felt like both a beautiful dream and a solemn vow.

“If any can envision a world without chains, it is you, your grace.”

Daario harrumphed, never one to be led by idealism.

“We might think of how to settle this one city before we begin planning to improve the world entire.”

“One continent at a time,” the Queen agreed, lips quirking.

And the meeting carried on, though Ireyne said not another word, lost in thought.

-

Missandei did not accompany the Queen to the lesser pits to watch desperate freedmen fight for the entertainment of displaced masters. She tended to Grey Worm, who still chafed at his slow recovery and longed to stand by her side to protect her. When she could think of no other excuse to tarry at his side, she rose up through the pyramid. Every footfall in that place echoed with a terrible history.

And of terrible things she had no shortage, for along came the little spy, arms full of scrolls.

“Ireyne,” Missandei greeted civilly, tilting her head a quarter of an inch as a mark of her respect.

“Good afternoon, Missandei,” Ireyne returned in good humour, though as ever she swept her eyes over Missandei, checking for arms or bad intentions. She did it quickly and innocuously; if Missandei had not grown up surrounded by the Unsullied and the men who wanted to own them, she would have missed it.

“How does Torgo Nudho fare?” Ireyne inquired solicitously.

Missandei resisted the instinct to stiffen at the mention of Grey Worm. She tried to decide if the question was meant to gauge how well protected the Queen was, or if it was meant to be a threat. The girl might have guessed what he meant to her and wished to use that knowledge that frighten her into some misstep.

“He grows stronger by the day,” she finally replied with a patient smile.

“I hope he will be well enough to walk about soon. I’m eager to meet him.”

 _No, you’re not_ , Missandei cursed inwardly. _He is strong and brave and skillful beyond your imagining, and you fear that he will interfere with your plans, for you cannot manipulate him as you do the sellsword._

“Of course,” she said, the smile unwavering. “He will appreciate your well wishes.”

She moved to carry on, but when she passed Ireyne’s side, the girl turned her head, speaking in a low tone.

“I am not your enemy. I want Daenerys to succeed as much as anyone.”

Her liberty, presuming to use the Queen’s name as if she were her bosom friend, galled nearly as much as her deception.

“You are a liar,” Missandei accused, allowing her voice a sharp edge. “And not who you say you are.”

“Yes, obviously.” Ireyne rolled her eyes at the accusation. “Lying about my name isn’t the same as lying about my loyalties.”

“What do you know of loyalties?”

Ireyne swallowed, lost for a moment.

“I know they get people killed,” she answered, breathing sharply after the last word. She took a second to compose herself. “But that doesn’t mean we give up on them. I haven’t got anyone left to be loyal _to_ – except her. There are so few good people still living, but the Breaker of Chains is one of them. And I _will_ keep her alive, and help her with her work.”

She spoke with sincerity, but Missandei had seen many who could fake such things.

“If you’re so loyal to the Queen, why lie?”

Ireyne smiled mirthlessly.

“Because telling the truth – the whole truth – would break my heart. Even the most leal servant must have a little piece of their heart for themselves, to give or to protect as they wish, mustn’t they?”

Missandei thought of a man, tucked in his sickbed and in a corner of her heart that not even the Queen could touch.

She struggled to answer, but found she had no words.

In the silence that hung between them, a din down below made itself heard.

They glanced at each other, tabling their discussion, and made their way to the noise, Ireyne handing off her documents to a passing maid with instructions.

Nearing the great hall, Missandei flagged Sure Spear, a captain of the Unsullied.

“What is it? Has something happened at the pits? Is the Queen unwell?”

Sure Spear, knowing who she was to his commander, spoke with his eyes lowered respectfully.

“The Queen is safe. May you go into the hall. She has returned from the pits, and she has brought Jorah the traitor and a Westerosi.”

“Man or woman?” Ireyne asked, brow furrowing.

“A man. A dwarf.”

**Notes for the Chapter:**

> For anyone wondering, Grey Worm is referred to as Grey Worm in the narration and when anyone says his name in the Common Tongue. When anyone is speaking Valyrian, they refer to him as Torgo Nudho.


End file.
